The size and the type of car seat required for children changes as the child gets older and bigger. Further, it can often be desired to have multiple car seats that are combinable as a single usable unit but usable as multiple units. Accordingly, the present disclosure provides a child car seat that is usable as a single unit but may be disassembled by a consumer and used in multiple additional configurations.
There are many kinds of child car seats on the market that can be used in multiple configurations. U.S. Pat. No. 6,682,143 B2 discloses a conventional child car seat adapted to be used in an automobile. A larger-sized child can be secured on this conventional child car seat directly by the seat belt of the automobile.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,754,999 discloses another conventional child car seat that includes a base member and a seat assembly coupled on the base member and having a backrest.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,845,967 discloses still another conventional child car seat including a unitary shell having an upper backrest portion and a lower seat portion connected to each other by an integral hinge. The upper backrest portion can pivot relative to the lower seat portion to a position so that it is aligned with the lower seat portion to thereby facilitate storage and transport of this conventional child car seat.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,845,968 discloses yet another conventional child car seat including a seat member and a backrest member. The backrest member can be stowed within the seat member, thereby also facilitating packing and shipping of this conventional child car seat.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,623,074 discloses still another conventional child car seat provided with a vertically movable headrest on which the harness straps are mounted so that the position of the harness straps will be automatically changed when the headrest is moved.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,625,043 discloses another car seat having a booster seating portion that may be separated from the main portion of the seat. The main portion of the seat is pivotally attached to the base member.
However, despite these prior art child car seats, it is still desired to have a car seat that has some of the advantages of the above-mentioned conventional child car seats but includes improvements thereon. In particular, it would be desirable to have a car seat that is separable into a usable backless booster and a separate backrest booster that may or may not include a harness thereon. It is further desired to have a connection mechanism between such a backless booster portion and backrest/harness booster portion that slides into a single opening. It is also desired to have a harness booster that may be transitioned to a backless non-harness system in a single motion. Finally, it is desired to have a harness booster combination backless non-harness booster that doesn't require disassembly of the harness system to remove the booster from the backrest/harness portion.